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Nissan releases heat tolerant battery and replacement battery cost

I have some firsthand experience with this. I live in Phoenix and had 2011 and 2012 LEAFs. Both lost 15% capacity after 10 months. The 2012 was down about 25% after 2 years. Heat was clearly an issue without a TMS.

Today, Nissan released their heat tolerant battery chemistry and announced a cost for a battery replacement:

Anyone think Tesla might release a heat-tolerant battery that might make a TMS unnecessary and perhaps lower the cost?

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If they could do it and lower cost, I think they would. But, to paraphrase JB Straubel, when you do that, you're just moving the problem to the cell. For the foreseeable future, a large battery with TMS should always work out cheaper than a large battery without a TMS.

The suggested retail price of the Nissan LEAF battery pack is $5,499. This price includes and requires a return of your original battery pack (valued at $1,000) to the dealer in exchange for the new battery. This price does not include tax, installation fees or an installation kit required for 2011 and 2012 vehicles. The MSRP for the installation kit (which includes brackets and other minor parts required to retrofit the newer pack to original vehicles) is approximately $225.

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for those who prefer an affordable monthly payment option, and we expect to keep that monthly payment in the $100 per month range

My 2011 LEAF with about 28K miles still shows all capacity bars on the dash and range is not much different from when I got the car new over 3 years ago... So I am not sweating a replacement battery (yet)... But it is nice to know there is finally an option for owners in case their (out of warranty) battery starts to become a problem.

They insist you turn in an old battery to buy the new, so conversion people aren't invited to buy these packs.

When I looked into buying a Leaf as a second family car the lack of TMS was a real concern. I ended up buying one only because I live in the Pacific Northwest, where we rarely get temperatures in the 80's, and when we do, it's not for very long. I don't think the Leaf is suited to anywhere with a hot climate since I read a lot about loss of capacity from owners in the southern states. When you only have 80 miles at best to start with (charging to 80%) the loss of even a small amount of battery capacity is a concern. Nissan had to deal with this concern with battery chemistry since it's much easier to do that then make new models with TMS which would basically be admitting a defect with their older models -- and it really is a defect if you own one of these cars in a hot climate -- from what I have read from those owners with loss of capacity over just one or two years.

This "heat tolerant" version was supposed to address that. It remains be seen if it does though (as when Nissan launched the first version they were pretty confident that they didn't need a TMS and we all know how well that turned out).

I hope Tesla eventually offers a battery replacement financing option...that would be pretty cool. Perhaps 3-4 more years down the road...

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The announcement linked in the first post in this thread says that Nissan will finance the replacement battery for about $100/month.

As someone that purchased a 2013 Leaf SV, I'm pretty excited about this announcement. When I purchased 11 months ago, I knew about the battery issues and that there wasn't a way to buy a replacement battery at the time. This price point is right around where I was hoping that Nissan would be. So much better than what the naysayers said it would be.

This is probably the wrong thread (sorry mods) but I figure the folks that know are probably reading this thread...

For a production vehicle, what's the most significant degradation that's been seen so far (any make/model) and in what timeframe? As an example, 75% (!) degradation on Model S would still give you ~66 rated miles which is still quite useful.

For a production vehicle, what's the most significant degradation that's been seen so far (any make/model) and in what timeframe? As an example, 75% (!) degradation on Model S would still give you ~66 rated miles which is still quite useful.

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I recall reading about a 50% degradation in one year in the Leaf in the Leaf forums. I believe that the most common rate of degradation on the Leaf is about 25% per year in hot climates.

Degradation also tends to be exponential, so owners usually don't see the same drop in absolute capacity sequentially. The exception to this is that higher discharges are more likely to depart from the smooth exponential decline in capacity at some point (the knee on page 9 of this pdf).

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